


follow me down to the valley below

by tanktrilby



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Judal is a ridiculous human being, M/M, Modern Setting, Temporary Amnesia, diverges from 264 onwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-29 00:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3876400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That time that Alibaba and Judal got thrown into a different world, sort of pissed the hell out of each other and sort of fell in love, and still managed to pick themselves up and get back to where they were supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	follow me down to the valley below

Alibaba doesn’t know why he expected Judal to stop being Judal once they broke into the mansion.

They’re barely past the huge double doors when Judal picks up a pair of dumb horn rim glasses, perches them on the bridge of his nose and looks intently at Alibaba. “How do I look?” He twirls a little, making his braid sway. “Totally different character type, right? I need a second opinion, stud, come on, use your words.”

“Like a dumbass with glasses,” Alibaba tells him. He’s antsy; he has reason to be, because they’re essentially risking getting arrested and possibly their lives to steal priceless old books, not that you could tell Judal that. Every whisper of noise, every creak and thud around the hopefully-still-empty house makes Alibaba fidget nervously. He grips his torch tighter. “Can we _go_ now, Useless? We don’t even know what it looks like.”

“I told you, I’ll know when I see it.”

“Right,” Alibaba says. He flicks the torch back on, steels himself and shines it around the cavernous library. It’s even bigger than he’d imagined, even after all those nervous hours of staring at the blueprints. The shelves reach the ceiling and the ceiling seems to reach the sky. They could search for _days_ and not find anything.

He exhales shakily. “…Shit.”

Judal moves forward. The hushed stillness of the library somehow seems to break as soon as he does. His long clever fingers dance along the spines of the books, even though he’s still looking straight ahead.

Alibaba says his name curiously and Judal turns back. His eyes are big and almost empty, luminous in the near-dark.

Alibaba says, “Judal,” sharper, a little close to afraid, and Judal’s gaze catches on him and holds. For a stretched, trembling second Alibaba’s convinced that this was it, he’d lost Judal too, _his last and only friend, give him back give him back **give him back**_ before Judal shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water.

When he looks back up, Alibaba can see the light of the torch reflected in his eyes. Something knotted tight inside him loosens when he sees it, and he unclenches his fists.  

“Whoa,” Judal says, hoarsely. “That was an acid trip if there ever was one. What the everloving fuck was _that.”_

Alibaba breathes in the old book smell a couple of times and waits.

Judal wordlessly reaches for the torch in Alibaba’s hands. “We’re definitely in the right place.”

Alibaba’s throat is very dry. “That’s, uh. That’s good.”

Judal smirks. It’s not his usual million-watter, less smug and more shaken. It’s still unbelievably good to see it. “C’mon, Hotshot,” he says. “Time’s a-wastin’, and this place is giving me the serious heebie-jeebies.”

With that, he pads into the darkness. Alibaba gets dragged along behind him automatically; he realizes, with a start, that Judal has a white-knuckled grip on his hand.

They make their way through rows of books and more than once, Alibaba gets the crazy feeling that the mansion’s library is bigger than the mansion itself. Judal seems to know where he’s going, though -dead-locked on a target that only he can see- and doesn’t seem put out by the way the walls seem to draw further away the closer they get.

He finally draws to a halt near the intersection of two bookcases. Even with Judal’s freak night vision, Alibaba doesn’t think he would’ve spotted the slim passageway in the middle. He gapes for a second before Judal, in uncharacteristic silence, charges right in.

Whatever’s guiding Judal seems to peter out as soon as they get to a sketchy-looking door with -Alibaba stoops to check- a knob made of solid gold. The door itself, too, looks like it’s been made of some kind of dull metal, not easily broken. It’s scarily out of place in a dust bunker like the library.

“It’s…it’s asking for our names,” Judal says. He’s got his lip caught between his teeth, worrying it, eyes darting across the corners of the door. “I think. Fuck, I think it wants our real names, which could mean-”

Alibaba rolls his eyes. “You magi, I swear,” he mutters under his breath before saying, loudly and clearly, “Our names are Alibaba and Judal.”

For a second, nothing happens. Then the entire room seems to _wrench_ sideways, nearly making him lose his balance. The door makes a sound like a deep groan, like a great mythical creature waking up, and begins to swing open.

Alibaba turns to shoot Judal a triumphant look. Judal’s looking at him strangely; like he’d said something exceptionally odd, but Alibaba doesn’t have time to figure it out before the door settles with an almighty bang-

-and the _screeching_ begins.

Alibaba moves on pure instinct then. Even as Judal’s eyes go wide and his hands come up to guard his ears, Alibaba’s surging forward, into the heart of the godawful _screaming like an entire country about to be wiped out women and children crying-_

The noise coalesces into thousands of hands, grasping at his clothes, tearing. In the middle of the room a single pair of hands holding a book and Alibaba lunges, grabs it. Words fall out of his mouth, like a bubbling stream: _I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,_ and in the crush of noise he hears sobbing and wails and his heart begins to break and-

-and Judal’s there, one hand fisted roughly in his collar, pulling him through the sea of unnamed grief. Judal, looking bright and terrible and furious, throwing him out and pushing the door closed behind him with his slender body.

“ _What the fuck, Alibaba,”_ Judal snarls. He looks blurry, so Alibaba reaches up to find his own cheeks, his eyelashes, his whole face wet with tears.

Judal rages above him, pacing and flinging his arms around. The book is a well-protected afterthought in his bag, so Alibaba relaxes. Judal’s just being a worrywart.

He climbs back on to his feet as Judal calls him more names, nearly incoherent. Without warning, Alibaba catches one of those flyaway hands and brings it to his side, squeezing. Judal looks even more outraged, so he knocks his forehead hard enough into Judal’s to shut him up. “You’re going to get so many grey hairs, worrying like that,” he sings softly, grinning. “Judal’s gonna look like an old man~”

Judal makes a series of angry-cat noises, and Alibaba laughs.

“Morons who run _towards_ the screaming have no room to judge anyone ever.”

He doesn’t look quite so scared anymore, so Alibaba bumps their noses together and chuckles when he rolls his eyes. “Hey,” he says. “We’re both alive, right? As long as we’re alive, anything’s possible.”

Judal looks at him for a long minute.

Then he says, snootily, “I can think of fucking hundreds of things that aren’t-”

Alibaba covers his mouth with a hand, grimacing. “I know you can, asshole. Wow, way to ruin the moment.”

“It’s your own fault for being so goddamn inaccurate.”

Somewhere not far off, a dog begins barking. Alibaba scowls. “Can we just _go already.”_

“Bossy,” Judal hums under his breath. On the way out, he steals the unattended glasses and wears them all the way home.

*

The birds come to visit him in his dreams again. Billions of fluttering wings, lit up in tiny pinpricks of a soft golden glow. So small they look like butterflies, and they dart around him, never touching, never colliding.

And the boy. Blue-eyed and blue-haired, playing a wordless little tune on his flute, laughing and tripping through the desert sand. He falls over and Alibaba falls with him, laughing side by side, his small hand tight around Alibaba’s. A kid like that, it’s hard to believe his grip is so strong.

He turns his head, and warbles something in his high, sweet voice.

Alibaba shakes his ears free of wind; when he looks back, the boy is gone, the desert is gone, and he slides into wakefulness with the taste of sand in the back of his throat.

The first thing he checks on is Judal. The process is almost clinical, like Alibaba’s a scientist observing a specimen of an experiment. Judal, who sleeps with his pillow hugged to his chest and mouth open, snoring deep, unattractive snores, getting his too-long hair tangled everywhere.

_When the world spits you out, find someone to hang on to._

Alibaba blinks, surprised. The thought had darted across his head from somewhere completely foreign, but it still sounds utterly familiar. He shakes his head, uneasy. 

After Judal, it’s the moons. Alibaba doesn’t remember when the world first began to go weird, but he does remember the exact day he began seeing the second moon. He’d been with Judal then, too (when wasn’t he?) and they’d looked up at the exact same time, and there it had been: a new, smaller moon, hanging right next to the original like a forgotten younger brother. The new moon looked almost dark next to its giant original; the stars near it glowed brighter than it did.

Alibaba had looked at Judal, panic fluttering in his throat, but Judal had been eerily calm, almost relieved. “So you see it too,” he’d said.

Alibaba had seen the new dark moon reflected in his eyes and felt the familiar visceral fear of losing him, but more intensely than he’d ever felt it before. Alibaba was good at adapting to change, much better than Judal was, but this was different. A part of him was ice-cold in its certainty that this new world would swallow Judal and never give him back, no matter how hard Alibaba hammered at its doors. 

A world with an extra moon that appeared quietly overnight was irrational. So in this world, his fears were irrational as well.

Judal turned his dark-moon eyes to him. “There’s a lot of gaps in my memory as well,” he’d said, quiet. Alibaba was staring at him, frozen. “Shit I should remember, but don’t. For an instance, do you know anything about the Imperial Chinese prince that overthrew his mother’s government and took over as Emperor last month?”

Alibaba’s eyes went wide. Before he could shake his head, Judal continued, “Or about the city in Lebanon that joined the Seven Seas Alliance? Fuck, Alibaba, you keep up with this shit way better than me, there’s no way you could’ve missed something like that.”

Something heavy had got stuck in Alibaba’s throat. He struggled to speak. “What…”

Everything Judal said was like a tingle across his spine, cold and damp. Judal was pointing out the gaping holes in his memory, one at a time. _He hadn’t even noticed._

“How long…” Alibaba fished for his voice. It was buried in a scared corner in his stomach. “How long since you realized?”

“Hm? Oh, not long. Three, four days, tops.” Judal shrugged. “It didn’t seem like a big deal. I forget shit all the time.”

Alibaba’s gaze dropped to Judal’s trembling hands. “Liar,” he said quietly. He reached out to punch him in the shoulder, over and over without meeting his eyes. “Liar, liar, liar.”

Judal flinched.

Alibaba scowled down at his hand. Everything was all wrong, and to make it worse he was saying the wrong things as well.

“What I mean is,” he said, tipping Judal’s face up to meet his eyes, “you don’t keep these things to yourself. Even if it’s one of your dorky problems, like matching your dumb scarf to your dumb coat, I wanna hear about it. Shit, Judal, this pretty much proves that all we’ve got is each other, so don’t go taking everything on your shoulders.”

His ears began to ring: a thin, sharp pain. He felt something trickle down the side of his face and knew it was blood, but couldn’t care. Judal was staring at him in a flat way that Alibaba didn’t like at all, like he was disconnecting somehow-

“So either the world’s crazy, or we are,” said Judal.  

Alibaba laughed, a little hysterically. “I think it’s definitely us.”

Judal laughed too, like something had shaken loose inside him. They leaned against each other, warm and familiar, until Alibaba’s ears stopped ringing and the shadows left Judal’s face entirely.

*

After nearly five hours of reading, Judal pushes his head towards Alibaba’s hand hopefully, and Alibaba grins and indulges him with scritches.

“Anything?” 

The soft mane of hair shifts. Alibaba deftly braids aside a few strands to see that Judal’s looking down at the book in his lap and shaking his head. “It’s one tangled clusterfuck after the other,” Judal says. He sounds almost _small._ “Just…some of it’s baby stuff like magic and djinns and dungeons, but the magic has a crapload of limitations and layers. It’s not like these guys can just fire lightning out their ass, magic’s powered by some shit that’s got a will of its own.”

Alibaba brushes some more hair aside, and peers down at the book. Whenever he looks at it, he feels a little dizzy, and he can read everything it says the second right before his eyes refocus. Alibaba doesn’t let it show, but he thinks Judal knows anyway.

He blinks, and the characters settle back into their unreadable shapes again. He wraps his arms around Judal’s neck to keep his balance, and sets his chin on Judal’s shoulder.  “And that’s the world that’s merging with ours?”

Judal makes a considering noise in his throat, but doesn’t answer.

Alibaba lets him think it out. Even after he’d accepted that the world was changing, all the possibilities he’d imagined were vague and formless. On his own, he’d never have found something as concrete as a book. But then again, this was Judal all over: horrifyingly incompetent at everything except having his head in the clouds. If the sky fell on them tomorrow, Alibaba has absolutely no doubt that Judal would be sitting back drinking one of his gay fucking fruit juices from one of his gay fucking straws and have it all figured out while _normal_ people like Alibaba ran around losing their shit.

But then again, Judal’s pretty much _totally useless_ on his own, so maybe he’ll have the self-preservation to fish Alibaba out of the panicked masses and make some smartass comments about damsels in distress.

Judal says, “Not merge.”

“Hm?”

“Worlds can’t merge, assknuckles. It’s like you said, it’s not the world that’s wrong, it’s us. We’re the ones fucking shit up.”

 Alibaba stares. It makes something in his head echo, and he chases the feeling until he finds the errant thought that had picked its way into his head this morning- _when the world spits you out, find someone to hang on to._

“Explain that, but in bigger words.”

Judal rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide how jittery and freaked out he is. “I think -and this is just a guess, hotshot- this world’s rejecting us because _we’re not supposed to be here in the first place._ Everything you see that doesn’t fit -the moon, that marketplace- is part of whatever world we came from. And the gaps in our memories might just be the shithole we’re in right now trying to take back parts of itself from us.”

“So-”

“And you,” Judal blurts out. His fingers are tap-tap-tapping away on his knee, and his head’s angled away from Alibaba’s. It doesn’t sit right; Alibaba can’t see his face, and he can’t shake off the way Judal looked with the wrong moon in his eyes, gleaming like coins.

“Me, what?” He shakes him a little, being very gentle. He instinctively knows that Judal going on the defensive might mean nasty things for them both.

“There was something you said yesterday.” Judal still won’t look at him. “I don’t think you noticed, but you called me a magi.”

Alibaba gapes at him.

Judal peeks a look at him through his eyelashes. “You said, _you magi, I swear,_ like maybe I wasn’t the only one you know. Knew.”

Alibaba shuts his mind closed, tight. He knows the face that’s fighting to surface: blue eyes and blue hair, a big smile and a warm hand, outstretched; his name sung in that birdlike voice - _Alibaba-kun!_ \- because they were the best of friends.

But the little boy best friend’s not here and Alibaba would be alone, but for mercurial arrogant Judal. Ridiculous Judal, now looking at him like he wants to say something simultaneously haughty and vulnerable, but can’t find the words.

“Hey,” Alibaba says, soft. “Hey Judal. We’ll figure it out.”

Judal cuts his eyes away swiftly. “You mean _I’ll_ bust my ass figuring it out while you sit back and watch your shitty cartoons.”

Alibaba kisses his cheek and prances away as Judal squawks. “Please and thank you!”

Judal growls. “You’re not half as cute as you think you are.” But the light’s catching his eyes in the right angle again. He doesn’t look like he’ll be stolen away by the world if Alibaba takes his eyes away for even just a second.

And that’s enough.

*

Even before his memory began eroding, Alibaba had the feeling his world was impossibly small, more of a bubble where he and Judal fit snugly without space for anything else. His life and Judal’s life were two sides of the same coin, and he honestly can’t bring himself to accept that this -him and Judal, fitting together like worn familiar puzzle pieces- wasn’t enough.

He figures that there’s not much to it, though. If this world was

( _spitting them out)_

rejecting them, they had no choice but to return, did they? What was coming would come, but Alibaba intended to have them both alive and ready to face it when it did.

He gets the nagging feeling that he ought to talk to Judal about this as well. The next day he hurries back from work, already halfway into the conversation in his head before he remembers that Judal asked him to pick up some books -from the _public_ library this time, thank god, where hopefully no breaking-in would be required- on his way.

He curses and retraces his steps. The public library of this small city is decent, pretty big by most standards, but it looks like a scale model compared to the last library he was in. When he steps inside, the walls don’t scoot back endlessly and the ceiling doesn’t brush the sky. The nervousness persists, however- there’s this tangled ball of unrest deep in his stomach, twisting and untwisting in on itself. He feels _restless,_ and he doesn’t know why.

As a result, it takes him far longer than usual to dig out the books on Judal’s list. He’s half-concerned that he’ll scare the other library-goers by his sweaty fidgeting, but it only makes an assistant show up and kindly pull out his books for him.

There’s a little plaque-thing reading SILENCE IS GOLDEN near the librarian that Alibaba notices as he hands Judal’s card over. For some crazy reason -probably his unexplained unease- he feels like pulling a Judal and telling her this place was a _total fucking shithole_

_(and I can’t believe I’m stuck in it with a bratty king vessel like you)_

but he restrains himself. The librarian was nice; everyone here was nice, and smiled at him when they managed to notice he was there, weak as his presence was. They ask him about Judal and it’s clear he’s one of their favorite regulars. It makes Alibaba happy, but it’s a distant emotion nearly drowned by the ringing in his ears.

He gathers his books and manages to stretch out a smile when they tell him to be back soon. He manages to keep his pace steady until he gets out, then down the steps and onto the street- and after that, he _runs._

The unnamed nausea in his stomach threatens to choke him, and he’s _sure_ that something’s gone wrong, and it was Judal, Judal was finally being taken away from him, _not him not him **give him back-**_

-he takes the steps up to his apartment three at a time, manages to slot his card in on the first try and bursts in, imagining the surprise on Judal’s face, the slow-spreading shit-eating grin-

-but what he finds is absolute chaos. Judal’s stacks of books have tipped over, spilling their pages everywhere, and the microwaves has fallen down and taken everything on the counter with it. Their apartment looks like a bloodthirsty hurricane hit it with a vengeance, and Judal-

-Judal’s gone.

*

 _Judal’s lounging on his wand like a cat, his ruby eyes glittering happily. “You and me, brat,” he says, and you have to struggle not to lunge for his throat then and there. Most of it is the heavy hand of grief, pushing you down to the ground - **this magi killed Cassim he was responsible**_ \- _but some of it is how goddamn annoying Judal really is. You’d had no idea. “Guess Hakuryuu came out on top, huh.”_

_Figures you’d get stuck with the weirdo who’s basically a proud mom figure to your old friend. Rival. Whatever._

_He blinks those big carmine eyes at you when you adjust your grip on your knife. “You’re still going to fight me? Seriously? Wow, you’re even more boring than Hakuryuu and I thought that wasn’t even possible.”_

_In retaliation, you send your metal vessel spinning at the vine that had been sneakily going for his throat with a fluid throw. His eyes go round; he flails once, overbalances, and falls off his impromptu throne._

_“And you,” you say irritably, “are_ useless.”

_He comes up with the bitchiest expression you’ve ever seen in all your years. “Yeah yeah yeah. Kick me when I’m down, that sounds just like the flowery sparkly ideals about friendship and fair play you kids like to shove in my face.”_

_You don’t want to start on that argument now -or ever, but fucking Hakuryuu would probably find a way to reach through time and space just to get on your nerves and make your heart hurt in that extra-special way reserved just for him. Instead, you prise your knife out and look around the endless space you’ve both landed in. The walls seem to warp now and then, and the light’s dim but completely steady. Aside from that one vine that probably found Judal as grating as he did, nothing seems to have any discernible intent at all. It’s just a vast eternity of nothingness._

_“Are you sulking?” Judal asks, floating irritatingly close to your face.  “Oh my god, you are. You’re such a brat.”_

_“I’m_ trying _to find a way out of here, useless magi,” you snap. “Unless you’ve forgotten in your old age, we were in the middle of a battle.”_

 _“The fact that we’re here means the battle’s already over, bratty king vessel.” Judal sounds way too complacent for someone basically admitting he lost a fight to a twelve-year-old. You have a moment of remembering -viscerally, painfully- about Aladdin, about Morgiana and Olba and Toto and_ oh god you were letting **everyone** down- _before you pull yourself back together. You landed yourself in this mess, you’d get out the same way._

_There’s just the small problem of you not having any idea where the hell you were._

_Judal is tapping at the walls and listening to the echo. You eye him doubtfully, and he makes faces at you._

_You stare at him in disbelief. “Hakuryuu really must take this Emperor thing seriously, to put up with you.”_

_Judal looks half-annoyed, half-delighted. He’s got a really expressive face, you realize. All those times you’d seen him before, you’d been caught up by how much you’d like him to fall off a cliff. “He kicked your ass to another dimension and you’re only now figuring this out?”_

_“Hakuryuu’s smart, he probably set it up this way so I get stuck with you and your useless magic stick,” you snipe back up at him. “He’s probably laughing it up back home.”_

_Judal’s mobile face does something then- it sort of spasms, like whatever he’s feeling would destroy him. You shut up. It was stupid of you not to notice, but no one in their right mind followed someone to war so blindly, did they? Unless they were crazy, or crazy in love._

_“You can use magic,” you blurt._

_You never were too smooth when things got emotional, were you? It sort of makes you miss Aladdin harder than ever._

_Judal regards you and seems to find your peace offering woefully subpar. He says, “Observant,” snippily, and you throw a blanket over your temper and forge on._

_“I mean, that must mean there’s still rukh around here. We were supposed to be cut off from it, right? Different dimension and stuff.”_

_Judal tips his head sideways curiously. “No, there definitely isn’t any rukh here, but...” he scrunches up his nose, which you suppose is his Thinking Face. “Hey, the magoi feels different too. I thought it was just weaker, but it’s a whole new type of energy.”_

_You wait for the follow-up dig at your intelligence, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Judal’s eyes have lit up, and his magic staff-thing is practically bouncing. “And I think it’s coming from you!”_

_You blink at him. “Who the what now?”_

_“I think -no, I’m sure- the energy in this world has a connection to yours. Maybe there’s a version of the bratty king vessel in this dimension as well, but never mind that. This means that…”_

_He peters out of words, and you make an inquisitive noise._

_He bites his lip for a minute before he looks at you square in the face. “Listen up, brat. The way I see it, our world spat us out and we have to find someone to hang on to. You can either find a way to go to that Great White Flow of yours and_ hope _that that doesn’t mean your puny human body doesn’t give out and think you’re dead, or you can get out of this wasteland and help me make a portal so we can get back.”_

_You listen very carefully. “Can’t you make a portal here?”_

_Judal shrugs. “If I had to guess, I'd say the world you’ve got a connection to has to be parallel to ours. There’s only one door here, and we can only cross our fingers and hope the next room has the door we actually want.”_

_“Then sure.”_

_Judal’s eyes blink very rapidly. “Eh?”_

_Your shoulders lift. “I need to survive to bring Hakuryuu back from depravity, and I have a country that’s counting on me.” You meet his eyes. “I don’t have the luxury of choosing the company I keep.”_

_Judal’s face breaks out into a bright grin. “I bet you wrote that speech beforehand,” he says, flinging out an arm towards you._

_You splutter for a second before you grab his hand. “What- how would I even-”_

_Judal laughs happily, and you sigh. “Grab on, and hope we don’t die!”_

_A burst of light shoots out of his wand, and you’re stunned to discover it illuminating a thread that runs straight from your chest. The thread stretches on and on, going straight through the stone wall. Judal makes a content little noise before everything explodes into white._

_*_

Alibaba wakes up to a vicious open-handed slap to his face and the sound of low, hopeless sobs.

He catches the hand and holds it to his face. “Fucking ouch, you asshole.”

The sobbing grinds to a graceless halt. A voice says -making the ground shake a little- “See, Judal-kun? I told you he’d wake up!” The voice, however enormous, sounds frantic. “Um. It’ll all be okay now!”

Alibaba smiles to himself, and opens his eyes.

Hovering over him, crimson eyes spilling big fat tears over his face, is Judal. For the first few seconds, Alibaba’s so _glad_ -so deeply, profoundly happy in a way that it threatens to well over, his body isn’t enough to contain it- that he can’t move.

The feeling passes, and Judal is still looking at him like he’s been taken apart and put back together again. His mouth is in a quivering shape, and his hair’s _everywhere._

“ _Judal,”_ Alibaba whispers, and surges up, and kisses him.

Immediately he’s pulling back, mumbling, “I’m sorry I forgot, oh god _Hakuryuu-“_

Judal’s shock gets wiped away immediately, and he makes a noise like an angry teakettle. “ _That’s_ your excuse? This took such a long time coming, and now you run away because _I had a stupid crush on Hakuryuu?”_

 “It was more than that, though,” Alibaba says, and Judal looks at him pityingly, like he’s an idiot. The effect’s lost by the way he’s still holding tight, tight to Alibaba’s hand and sniffling a little.

Hope crackles through Alibaba’s bloodstream. “Okay, so not. It’s a crush. Er.”

“We can talk about that gay little moment you had with him in Zagan’s dungeon yourself, if you like,” Judal says, and he’s mostly stopped crying now. “Or how about _Sinbad-san_ this and _Sinbad-san_ that?”

Alibaba blushes at him angrily. “You were never this difficult back when you didn’t have your memories.” He sees the way Judal’s radiant joy falters, and rolls his eyes. “You really are a useless magi.”

With that, he kisses him again, hard, and after a few startled seconds Judal _melts,_ his mouth turning soft and pliant. Alibaba angles his face sideways and it’s so _good,_ so _right_ and he knows he’s smiling hard and-

“Um,” says the boomy voice nervously.

Judal goes flying backward. Alibaba can’t bother to adjust to what’s going on, because Judal’s staring at him, pupils blown wide, cheeks flushed, his hand at his mouth.

Alibaba grins brightly at him, and Judal makes a squeaky noise. He turns away in a swift swish of his braid, and Alibaba can’t _wait_ to run his hands through his hair again, see what face Judal makes when he kisses his wrists and neck.

“This is rare,” says the huge voice, a little more confidently. Alibaba manages to drag his gaze away from Judal’s red face, and is only a little surprised to find a giant blue disembodied head lying casually on the top on a stairway. “Alibaba-kun, it’s been a while.”

Alibaba looks around. The hall is made of a white that should have hurt his eyes, but is actually pretty soothing. He doesn’t really recall being here before.

He looks at Judal for help, but he’s still got his arms crossed and pout on, so he can’t expect any help there. Alibaba sighs and looks at the giant head, prepared to grab his pissy magi and run.

“I’m sorry, I don’t… my memory’s been all over the place lately, it’s so annoying,” Alibaba says.

All three giant blue eyes go even bigger. “Oh, I remembered! You haven’t actually seen my head, just my body! My name is Uraltugo Noi Nueph,” he pauses a little, smiling, “and a little friend of ours calls me Ugo-kun.”

Alibaba smacks his fist into his palm, relieved. “I get it! The _huge_ body that used to come out of Aladdin’s flute, right? Nice to meet you again!”

“Pleasure’s all mine, Alibaba-kun,” beams Ugo.

“Whoop-diggety-doo,” Judal mumbles sullenly, and Alibaba tries not to laugh. “Ain’t it all swell.”

“Right, right,” Ugo flusters, and Alibaba can’t believe he’s actually afraid of a big baby like Judal.

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks: Judal’s still the bad guy, the one who pulled Hakuryuu over to depravity.

Only now, Alibaba can’t see it that way. Or rather, there are new angles, ones that have nothing to do with the warm, soaring feeling in his chest he gets when he looks at Judal.

Judal is contradictory, immature, and kind of a dick, but Alibaba sees the ancient wisdom in him, mixed in with Judal’s own brand of mischievous curiosity and, underneath it all, the deep sense of sadness. Al-Thamen did a horrible, awful thing to him as a child by stealing his life from him, but Judal’s not really _mad,_ he’s just sad, all the way down to his core. Everything else comes after that: Judal's got that kind of strength, enduring and overcoming.

Alibaba thinks he’s kind of magnificent.

He knows he can’t convince Judal if he told him now, so he keeps quiet. He’d _show_ him. Alibaba has made a lot of promises to himself, but this is engraved into his soul.

Ugo is watching him patiently, and he realizes that he’s been asked a question. “I’m sorry?”

Judal comes over to him, and Alibaba throws an arm around his waist and draws him close. “Pay attention, spoiled brat.”

“As if you were-”

“I was saying,” Ugo says helplessly, “that Judal-kun explored a theory that’s never been tested before to save both your lives. King Solomon would be enthralled.”

Alibaba grins up at him, even as Judal goes worryingly still. “He’s brilliant, isn’t he?”

Judal groans.

Ugo’s eyes twinkle. “Indeed, Alibaba-kun. Your choice in companion-”

“Boyfriend,” Alibaba corrects helpfully, and Judal goes about a hundred shades redder.

Ugo rolls around a little happily. “You choice in boyfriend is exceptional. And even now, his mastery of rukh was remarkable. Ordinarily, this is a place reserved for magi only, but he used your energy to pull you out of the Flow.” He watches as Judal glares daggers at them both with apparent enjoyment. Then he says, seriously, “Judal-kun, I imagine you will turn over to depravity once more upon return?”

Judal straightens from his slump. His chin goes up. “Hell yeah.”

Alibaba has been expecting this, but it still hits hard. “So we’ll be on opposite sides again,” he says softly.

”It’s a war,” Judal says sharply. His voice is brittle. “We haven’t changed as people. We still think the same things.”

Alibaba looks at his profile for a minute. Judal looks fiercely focused, and when Alibaba searches inside himself, he finds that he feels the same way.

“Right,” he says. He presses a kiss into Judal’s hair. “And when the time comes for us to fight, I’ll hit you with all my feelings, and we’ll see what happens.”

Judal turns his head -finally, finally- to meet his eyes. His own are shimmering. “You’re s-so fucking lame, Alibaba.”

“I love you,” Alibaba tells him seriously.

Judal colors a little, but mostly looks annoyed. “Me too, bratty king vessel.”

Alibaba grins. “We can figure it out as we go. We’ll find a way to be together, I promise.”

 “ _Lame_ ,” Judal complains.

Alibaba’s left eyebrow twitches and Judal smirks at him. “Okay, Ugo-san, I think we’re ready to go back.”

Ugo eyes them worriedly. “Are you sure-”

“’Course. Don’t worry, this brat won’t give you more trouble. I’ll keep an eye on him,” Judal says breezily.

“I don’t think-”

“Ugo-san totally knows it’s useless magi like you who make trouble.”

“I didn’t- I mean, I-“

“Send us over, dammit,” Judal says, eyes flashing, and the gigantic head _eeps._ “We’ll settle this once and for all back in our world. And before I forget.”

He pulls Alibaba in and kisses him, hard deep and intense. Alibaba wraps his arms around his shoulders and kisses back just as hard; it feels like he’s about to be cast adrift, and he holds on to Judal tighter.

“I’ll win, and make you _see,_ ” Alibaba says, in a low, rough voice. Judal laughs breathlessly, a little sadly.

Ugo says, “Until we meet again.”

The air funnels into a gust around them, and even Alibaba’s ordinary eyes can pick out the beginnings of the muted golden glow of the rukh. Judal kisses him again, softer than before.

“I can’t handle goodbyes,” Alibaba admits.

Judal smiles against his mouth. “This isn’t one, dumbass. It’s a good luck kiss, for whatever measly little battles you’ll go to before you take me on.”

Alibaba smiles back, and it feels like his heart’s about to break. But he feels Judal, warm and extraordinary, beside him, and the new day of the old world washes over them both and he knows that it’ll all be alright.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hoooly shit, this was not meant to be so long. it started out as a fun drabble of judal/alibaba interaction and then plot happened and i wasn't ready. obviously I started this before 265 came out, but I was too far in and way too invested to drop it. But please tell me if there are inaccuracies, my bullshitting skills aren't very good at five o' clock in the morning. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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